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A century ago, Walter Howard Frere, in his seminal work on chant, identified typical melodies and phrases across the Office repertoire. The question remains, however, how one is to deal with the other musical material; that is, the chants that do not employ those stock turns of phrase. This chapter examines the 11th-century Office of St. Julian of Le Mans by Letaldus of Micy, identifying musical elements that are either traditional or new. One result is a new threefold distinction to replace Frere's two broad categories of “typical” and “original”. This chapter proposes 1) passages or...

A century ago, Walter Howard Frere, in his seminal work on chant, identified typical melodies and phrases across the Office repertoire. The question remains, however, how one is to deal with the other musical material; that is, the chants that do not employ those stock turns of phrase. This chapter examines the 11th-century Office of St. Julian of Le Mans by Letaldus of Micy, identifying musical elements that are either traditional or new. One result is a new threefold distinction to replace Frere's two broad categories of “typical” and “original”. This chapter proposes 1) passages or complete chants that made more of less literal use of traditional turns of phrase; 2) passages that behave following certain orthodox modes of range, tonal structures, and ways of expansion; and 3) unorthodox or eccentric passages in chants that are outside the norms. What is defined as orthodox, of course, will change with the times.